Where was my Hannah Schmidt when I was fifteen years
old? Minus the whole Nazi war criminal thing of course.
Hollywood’s ‘Nazi’s were bad people’ month continues
with ‘The Reader’, a coming of age story like few others
that for ninety percent of its running time was one fine
film, with the last ten percent leaving me thinking that
this was something I could’ve done without.

It would appear upon meeting Michael Berg (Ralph
Fiennes), where this movies present takes place in the
mid 1990’s, is that he is a cold and distant man. He has
obviously just spent the night with a woman, and though
we have a pretty good idea about what transpired the
previous evening, this morning Michael is perfunctory
and polite treating the woman as if she had just
prepared his taxes. It is clear that Michael likes sex,
just not all that intimacy nonsense that is usually
associated with the act.

The question is why is the successful Berlin based
barrister like this, seemingly in a constant state of
detached depression? For the answer the film takes us
back to the late 50’s where an ailing young Michael Berg
(David Kross) is helped by woman who saw to it that he
made it home safely. Once well Michael goes back to
thank the woman and accidentally sees her in her
underwear, and having been a fifteen year old boy,
that’s more than enough. Michael visits her again, is
summarily seduced and for the next couple of months or
so he’s skipping classes and getting home late because
he has business to take care of.

This woman in her mid thirties is Hannah Schmidt (Kate
Winslet). I’m not quite sure what she sees in the boy,
but Hannah does seem to be an isolated and very lonely
person. After the wild newness of the sex has toned down
a bit the couple attempts to get to know each other a
little with Hannah particularly enjoying having Michael
read to her. Their relationship would last the summer
with Hannah suddenly disappearing for personal reasons
and young Michael internalizing this abandonment,
convinced that he was in love, and is now unable to come
out of his shell. This is why we don’t have sex with
fifteen year-olds. That and also because it’s against
the law.

Michael would see Hannah some years
later as he is surveying a Nazi trail as
a law student and to his shock and
dismay, Hannah Schmidt is one of the
defendants. Though Hannah far from
innocent, she isn’t guilty of all of the
crimes that she is being accused of.
Hannah’s shame causes her to fall on the
sword and Michael could have helped her
because he knows the truth, but his
personal shame prevents him from doing
even that, thus making a depressed dude
even more depressed. It won’t be for a
number of years until Michael finally
does something to deal with these
feelings he’s been carrying around for
the majority of his life, feelings that
have tainted pretty much every
relationship he’s ever been in.

With ‘The Reader’, based on a novel by
Bernhard Schlink, director Stephen
Daldry has crafted a film which
effortlessly glides over a number of
genres, all of them being universally
engaging to experience for the most
part. The film rings true as a coming of
age story with David Kross convincingly
playing the part of a boy far too
emotionally immature to deal with the
situation that he has found himself in,
no matter how cool this situation may
seem to be at the time. I merely ask in
jest where my Hannah Schmidt was when I
was fifteen because it is the height of
irresponsibility for an adult to subject
a child to this kind of behavior. Now
Miss Schmidt, as she is so capably
handled by Kate Winslet, is a much more
complex character to get a bead on.
Ultimately I’d have to read that the
character is selfish and cowardly.
Selfish because she places her desires
before whatever the potential
consequences and cowardly because her
complete inability to suppress her pride
over matters of simple right and wrong.
It’s almost incomprehensible what the
character of Hannah would do
to hide a virtually worthless personal
secret.

As a coming of age story ‘The Reader’
was engrossing and it became even more
so during the trial portion of the movie
with the young Michael Berg struggling
over his own issues of right and wrong,
it’s when it came time for the senior
Michael Berg to resolve these issues
that movie bogged down for me. This
particular part of the film lacked the
electricity and urgency that the earlier
part of the film possessed, with simply
too much time spent looking at Ralph
Fiennes character pitying himself and
his scenes with the older Hannah Schmidt
came off as ambiguous in their emotional
intentions. There was a very good scene
near the end of the film between Fiennes
and Lena Olin who plays a child survivor
of the concentration camps which does
lift up the last act, but I don’t know
if it saves it.

Despite these issues I might have had
with ‘The Reader’ it was still a finely
tuned drama with great acting, a tightly
knit narrative and excellent direction
provided by Stephen Daldry. I do think
it runs out steam as it attempts to
conclude itself, but it was still a very
good movie to experience.